Date

1978

Author

Balcıoğlu, Emin Mahir

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Theorists who aim at solving current architectural problems often convey their work at revaluating past architectural styles and movements. This kind of approach which in effect invests history of a dynamic quality, finds its roots from the variability of interpretation that causality (one of the determining elements of history) is pliant to. Most historical researches are viced as a result of the criteria chosen by the historian. Often, these criteria, which deprive the research of its objectivity, are a product of the historian's ideological tendencies. A reinterpretation of a specific historical moment may sometimes give extremely fruitful results which in effect may contribute to the solution of contemporary problems. Seen from this optic, Constructivism has a paradigmatic value. For nearly four decades Constructivism, which is an important artistic and architectural movement of a very stimulating period of history, has been evaluated and classified with the same criteria used to evaluate modern architecture movements, contemporary to the post-revolution years in the U.S.S.R. This contradictory interpretation was left unaltered until western architectural historians began to search for new material on a subject unknown and much ignored in the west. The first concrete results of these efforts were published in the second half of the 1960's. The student movements of 1968, the will for change which had emerged as a cultural movement, and the role with which architecture was vested of in the process of creating a new society, enriched Constructivism of a new value, that of being a starting point for efforts made in the direction of finding a new meaning and collocation to architecture. It seems imperative that anyone who believes in the determining role of architecture in the creation of a new world, should study the post-revolution architecture of the U.S.S.R. and should try to understand the reasons for its premature extinction. This kind of study is being constantly facilitated by new works published on the subject. One such work is a translation from Russian to Italian of Moisej J.Ginzburg. Ginzburg is one of the most important figures of Russian architecture of the 1920-30's. His contributions are not only theoretical but also practical. The translation of his three most important essays (Rythm in Architecture, Style and Epoch-Problems of Contemporary Architecture, and Housing) are most valuable not only for their scientific content but also because it enables the reader to follow the author's cultural evolution through a certain time span. As for the contents of his works, it can be said that the first one (Rythm and Architecture) can be considered of a certain value in it being his first attempt toward a theoretical work. But the most important work written in a period of maturity of the author is "Style and Epoch-Problems of Contemporary Architecture." In this work Ginzburg does a historical analysis of style and its evolution throughout history, and he considers Constructivism the natural result and end to this evolution. A third essay which Ginzburg wrote in a period when all his energy was concentrated on the subject of large scale housing schemes is "Housing." Nevertheless, his second work is more important for those who attempt to learn more about constructivism as the foundation of a new architecture which will be a tool to construct the future.

URI

http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/1978/cilt04/sayi_1/53-64.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/51248

Collections

Department of Architecture, Article